Roebling Museum marks 10th anniversary with new exhibit, lectures

Kids in engineering camp at the Roebling Museum in Roebling, N.J., this summer take on an ambitious bridge-building project on the site where the Roebling company made steel cable for the Brooklyn Bridge and many other famous bridges
Carol Comegno/Videographer

The Roebling Museum was part of the site of the former John A. Roebling's Sons Company steel mill in the Roebling section of Florence Township.(Photo: Courtesy of the Roebling Museum)

FLORENCE TWP. - The public effort to preserve part of the Roebling and Son steel and wire mill site that helped build world-class bridges is the highlight of a new exhibit marking the 10th anniversary of the Roebling Museum's founding.

“The Heritage Keepers: How We Got Here" exhibit outlines the mill-to-museum story of a hard-fought campaign to establish the Roebling Museum on the former 200-acre industrial complex along the Delaware River.

Mill founder John A. Roebling built the village of Roebling in Florence adjacent to the mill, which became a Superfund site 25 years ago.

The Roebling Historical Society, which formed in 1980 with 13 members, later led to the formation of another nonprofit, the Roebling Museum, in 2007.

"The society harnessed the power and money of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the political will of the community to preserve mill history and make it live on through this museum," said museum director Varissa McMickens Blair.

She said it took decades of negotiating, arguing, waiting, working, collecting and fundraising to plan the museum.

Its building was the mill's main gatehouse at 100 Second Ave. through which employees entered and punched a time clock and where the mill police were located.

The gate building had been allowed to deteriorate after John A. Roebling's Sons Co. mill closed in 1974. The structure had collapsed partially and was overgrown with vegetation by that time EPA finally agreed 30 years later to restore the entryway building and set aside seven acres for the museum under a pilot program to find new uses for Superfund sites following their cleanup.

The rest of the mill site has been designated a redevelopment zone by the township but has yet to be developed.

By 1977, both the village of Roebling and the old mill site had been listed on the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Register of Historic Places.

A ship passes under the Brooklyn Bridge, lower, built by John A. Roebling's Sons Company(Photo: John Minchillo, AP)

The industrial history museum has more than 3,000 artifacts either collected from the site, donated by former workers or their families or purchased online. This includes steel cable like that which was manufactured at Roebling for the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York and for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

The landmark and its collection also memorializes the Roebling family and worker spirit that made those achievements possible.

As part of its anniversary celebration, the museum is hosting a monthly lecture series. On June 10, Stephen Buonopane, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Bucknell University, will speak on John A. Roebling's early suspension bridge building in the 1800s from the first span in Pittsburgh to the famous Brooklyn Bridge.

On July 8 at 1 p.m., author Erica Wagner, former literary editor of The London Times, will launch the U.S. release of her newest book, "Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge." It is a biography of John A. Roebling's son, who completed the Brooklyn Bridge with the help of his wife after his father died.

A week-long STEAM (Science, Engineering, Technology, Arts/Architecture and Math) camp Aug. 7-11 and a day-long Kids Create camp July 22 also are planned. Both are for children and registration is urged.